


The Human Way

by battle_cat



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Hand Jobs, M/M, Porn with Feelings, the unexpected pitfalls of being a slutty slutty demon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 11:09:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20241868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: They're finally about to fuck on the bookshop couch and Aziraphale wants to know what Crowley wants.





	The Human Way

Demons weren’t supposed to have wants.

Wants were human things. A want was a lever, a chink in the armor, a crack where temptation got in. A demon’s job was to take human wants and twist them to infernal ends. Someone who wanted would listen to you if they believed you could give. Or if you convinced them that it was their right to take.

Demons lived surrounded by wants. Power, fame, money, sex, revenge, violence. All those human yearnings just fluttering out there in the open, waiting for greasy demon fingers to start caressing them into sins. 

Demons weren’t supposed to have wants of their own. (They did, of course. But it wasn’t something you talked about.) A demon could get into a lot of trouble for pursuing their own wants on company time. And all time was company time. Hell wasn’t much for labor laws.

Wanting an angel was most definitely not permitted. And while Crowley had never given a rat’s ass about Hell’s rules in a philosophical sense, he cared quite a bit about avoiding Hell’s punishments. One had to choose one’s risks carefully.

But none of that mattered anymore.

In fact, at this exact, particular moment, six days after the world didn’t end, Crowley was absolutely certain that very few things in all of Creation mattered one bit. Except Aziraphale’s tongue, in his mouth, and Aziraphale’s scotch-tinged breath, rough and urgent on his face, and Aziraphale’s hands, digging into his hips as he straddled Aziraphale’s lap on the bookshop couch. These things currently mattered an unbearable amount.

Grinding down on Aziraphale’s lap and realizing with a jolt that they’d both Made an Effort for the evening (he couldn’t remember thinking about that; had he thought about that or had it just _happened?_) and then feeling Aziraphale’s arms shift to loop around his back and shoulders and _hold him there_ while Aziraphale sucked kisses down his neck…that mattered too. Possibly more than anything else in existence.

“You know,” Aziraphale breathed against his skin. “If we were humans, this is the part where we would have sex. Do you want to?”

He fully intended to respond with something snarky, but Aziraphale rocked his hips where they were pressed against each other and he just made an embarrassing noise. “…Yeah,” was all he could get out.

At least—he thought through a haze of arousal and somewhere around eight shots of scotch—Aziraphale had managed to say _have sex_ instead of something absurd like _make love._

“Oh, thank goodness,” Aziraphale said, in a tone that was more appropriate to having made it to the dry cleaner’s a few minutes before closing time. It was ludicrously incongruent with the way Aziraphale’s very obvious erection was pressing against his own.

“Here?” Crowley managed.

“Why not? ‘S my shop, isn’t it?” Crowley could feel the smug little smile where Aziraphale’s mouth was pressed against the skin under his jaw.

Aziraphale was kissing him, touching him, confident hands running over his chest, his back, his thighs. Aziraphale was…quite a lot more self-assured at this than he had been expecting, and it was both disconcerting and _incredibly_ hot.

“Tell me what you want,” he breathed, punctuating it with a nip at Crowley’s ear.

“Uhn—I want _you,_ angel.” As if it wasn’t obvious.

“Yes, but…” Aziraphale’s hands were on his shoulders, sliding off his jacket, and of course he draped it neatly over the couch arm, _of course_ he did. “Now’s the time to be getting a little bit more specific.” His mouth was back, sucking at the spot where neck and shoulder met, soft fingers dragging aside the neckline of his shirt to expose more skin. “How do you like it?”

“Hnnh…doesn’t matter. Anything. Anything you want.” Satan’s sake, now that this was happening, _actually fucking happening,_ was the angel intending to discorporate him through sheer teasing alone? Because Crowley was pretty sure he could manage it.

Aziraphale pulled back to look at him, and Crowley stifled a groan of frustration. “It _does_ matter,” Aziraphale said. It took Crowley a second to place the tone of voice as indignant. Aziraphale’s thumb tracing his lower lip was very distracting. “I want to know what you like.”

“I…hrm…” 

_Fuck._

He squeezed his eyes shut. Oh, this was humiliating. Of course it was. Why would he possibly get something he’d wanted for thousands of years without some final mortification to stumble over at the threshold?

It wasn’t, so much, that no one had ever asked him. There had been humans over the years—tempting, lust, deadly sin, et cetera—and the polite ones had. It was just that…with humans, the answer was always right there, in their heads. He just did a quick rifle through their fantasies and picked something they _wanted_ him to want, and off we go. It was easy when they were broadcasting their wants like a high-powered radio tower.

In a twist of fate that the Almighty probably found hilarious, that particular demonic power did not work on angels. He could only find out what Aziraphale wanted _the human way_—in glances, in interpreting the line of a shoulder, in things said between words. Or (Hell forbid) by _asking._

_Just make something up,_ he thought. But he’d always been shit at lying to Aziraphale.

“I dunno,” he mumbled without opening his eyes. 

“Hm?”

“I don’t _know,_” he ground out. “I’ve got no bloody clue what I like.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t want to see whatever look was on Aziraphale’s face. He wanted his sunglasses, but they were out of reach behind the couch where he’d dropped them when the kissing had started. He slid off Aziraphale’s lap and flopped down on the overstuffed cushions with a growl of frustration.

“I just…assumed you had…”

“I have!” he snapped. “I have, I have—demon, temptation, all that. But…that’s _work,_ you know?”

He risked a glance at Aziraphale’s face, fully prepared for a look of pity and equally prepared to turn into a snake for the next century if he saw it.

That wasn’t how Aziraphale was looking at him. In fact he couldn’t quite place the way Aziraphale was looking at him. But there was something thoughtful and earnest in his gaze.

His legs were still draped across Aziraphale’s lap, and Aziraphale’s hand rested on his shin. Neither of them had made a move to change that.

“Forgive me,” Aziraphale said after a moment. “I shouldn’t have assumed anything. I just thought…you must have tempted a human here and there, with your…wiles.” He couldn’t conceal the tiniest twitch of a smile as he said it.

“Yeah, loads of ‘em. Done things you’d never even think of, angel.”

Only someone who’d known Aziraphale for six thousand years would have been able to discern something so subtle as his mouth saying nothing while his eyes were saying _oh try me._

“I just…thought you would have developed preferences, is all.” Aziraphale’s voice was perfectly even, mild, which made the slow half-circle his thumb traced across Crowley’s leg all the more noticeable.

“It doesn’t really work that way,” Crowley found himself saying, and fuck it all, here he was about to be open about something again. Aziraphale was still studying him with that careful, considered, patient gaze. The _bastard._

“Tempting someone to, y’know…_lust after you_…it’s all about making yourself into whatever it is they want. It’s a performance, right? Doesn’t have anything to do with what _you_ want. Honestly it’s highly preferable you don’t want anything at all; gets very confusing otherwise. Much better if it’s just business.”

Aziraphale says nothing but he can almost see the mental card-catalog-shuffling of the angel slotting a number of their historical meetings into a new context.

“And besides, we’re not really…supposed to, you know. Want. It’s bad form. Unprofessional, what have you. You’re there to be the _object_ of lust, not—not have the lust yourself. Be rather like working in a donut shop and eating everything behind the counter. It’s not there for you.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said yet again, and Crowley could tell he was really thinking about things, because he hadn’t immediately suggested they go for donuts. “Didn’t think Downstairs would go in for rules like that.”

Crowley shrugged. “_You_ had plenty of things you weren’t supposed to indulge in.”

“Yes, but…”

“Always thought demons had a bit more fun with it?” He put on a sardonic smile. “Oh come on. Can’t make Hell too enjoyable, now can we?”

To his severe dismay, Aziraphale had gone from looking thoughtful to looking _sad._ Hell preserve him, how had he managed to turn this from _almost FINALLY FUCKING_ into the least sexy conversation possible?

“Ohh, don’t make this a _thing,_ angel,” he groaned. “It’s nothing. It’s fine.”

“It’s just…all those times I saw you with someone. I mean…I knew you were…working. I just didn’t quite think of you as…”

“What?” Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Hell’s favorite honeypot?” He winked, turning on the charm, the artifice, just for a second. He never said he wasn’t good at it.

“I promise you, out of all the ways that Hell can use you, there are _far_ worse options. At least I was up here, with—” He stops abruptly when Aziraphale’s gaze flicks up to meet his. “Er…all of this.”

Aziraphale’s gaze retreated back to somewhere around Crowley’s knee, which was still draped across his lap. “You know…” His thumb was doing that thing again, the slow half-circle over the curve of Crowley’s shin. “Those times, when I would see you with someone else… I was jealous, honestly.”

Crowley held the suave exterior in place by sheer fucking force of will. “Well. Secondary mission accomplished, then.”

And he sees it, the tiny, clandestine smile that he catches on Aziraphale’s face sometimes. The one that makes him think _naughty angel._

“So…” His thumb. His fucking _thumb_ on Crowley’s leg. It’s such a stupid, idle, not-even-inherently-sexual touch. How can it be _maddening?_ “Have you never…done it before…just because you wanted to? Purely for pleasure?”

Insufferable angel, saying _pleasure_ with his soft mouth and lowered gaze like that, as if Crowley had any choice but to answer.

“Never, ah—” Oh, marvelous, here it was, a previously undiscovered shard of vulnerability, hiding underneath all the other ones, just waiting to cut him. He had to close his eyes again. “Never wanted anyone else like that. Just, um. Just you.” Satan on a tricycle, love made you so excruciatingly earnest.

“My dear…” Aziraphale said after a moment, very softly.

“Don’t mock.” He couldn’t help it; he _wanted_ to trust but he couldn’t help the flinch after being so raw.

“I would never.” Aziraphale’s voice was quiet, fervent, and dead serious. He gave Crowley’s leg a gentle squeeze. “Come here. If…you still want to?”

He opened his eyes to see Aziraphale holding out a hand. He never could say no to him.

He let Aziraphale pull him back into his lap. Let Aziraphale arrange him there with an ease that made him shiver. His legs bracketing Aziraphale’s soft thighs. An arm around his waist, firm enough to keep him in place.

(Some people saw Aziraphale’s softness and thought it was the same as weakness. Crowley knew better. Aziraphale was steady as a rock when he wanted to be.)

There was a kiss, a gentle one, faces lingering close enough to brush noses between lips meeting and parting and meeting again. Aziraphale still tasted like the very nice bottle of scotch they had forgotten about what seemed like half an age ago. There was a hand in his hair, a hand tracing the line of his jaw. A hand that started on his knee and slid in a firm, slow drag up the inside of his thigh. Fingers digging in. Greedy. _Possessive,_ one might go so far as to say. It made him shudder.

“Pay attention,” Aziraphale said, his lips a millimeter away from Crowley’s. As if any power on Earth, above, or below could have made Crowley do otherwise. “Tell me what’s good. I’ll remember.” The hand on his thigh moved to trace feather-light over the shape of his half-hard cock in his trousers, barely a tease.

Things in that region had cooled down considerably, but they heated up again so fast he was dizzy with it. He whined into Aziraphale’s mouth.

Aziraphale was unbuttoning his shirt, one button at a time, pressing kisses to his neck as he did it. “You know,” Crowley breathed, and fuck, his voice already sounded wrecked, “you can just miracle it off.”

“I know,” Aziraphale murmured against his skin. “But sometimes the human way has its charms.” And then his shirt was slithering to the floor, and Aziraphale’s hands were on his skin, trailing over his bare stomach, the ridge of a shoulderblade; a hot mouth on his collarbone, his shoulder; exploring everywhere.

It _was_ different. Everything was different. Aziraphale was right. All those times, he hadn’t been paying attention. To the other person, yes. _(Do they like this? Am I making myself what they want? Temptation accomplished yet?)_ But not to himself. And, _God,_ the sensations a human body could produce… He was starting to understand why this could seem so important to them.

He was grinding down against Aziraphale’s lap; how long had that been going on? Long enough for Aziraphale’s breath to roughen, for his nails to dig into Crowley’s back. That sublimely terrible hand between his legs was back, a teasing stroke up and down the length of him where he was getting very, very hard. “Angel, _fuck,_” he gasped finally. “Please touch me.”

The laws of physics may have been slightly bent to allow Aziraphale to get a hand inside his trousers. One can only ask so much from reality.

And then Aziraphale was touching him, his hand warm and maybe slightly slick or just very, very soft, and Crowley couldn’t do anything but grab desperate handfuls of Aziraphale’s jacket and whimper against his shoulder.

“Ungh, shit, your hands, you don’t know how much I’ve thought about your hands.” He was babbling but he didn’t care.

“Have you now?” Aziraphale’s voice was as soft as his hand was unrelenting. “Have you thought about me touching you?”

“So many times,” he gasped. Aziraphale’s thumb rubbed just under the head of his cock, that spot that was so sensitive. “_Oh,_ hnnh, yes, that, do that…”

“You’re not alone,” Aziraphale purred. “I’ve thought about this, you, right here—”

“Ohh—”

“You have no idea…all the places I’ve thought about having you…”

“Tell me.” Aziraphale’s hand was speeding up; he was helpless to do anything but hang on for dear life and surrender.

“In a box at the opera house, the highest tier, where no one could see us—”

“You _would—”_

“In the men’s room at the Ritz, pressed up against the wall—”

_“Fuck—”_ He couldn’t stop his hips from twitching up, chasing Aziraphale’s touch.

“On my knees, taking you in my mouth in the back seat of your car—”

_“God—”_ He came, shuddering and messy and loud. He was dimly aware of an arm around his back, pulling him close as Aziraphale wrung every drop of pleasure from him. If it was blasphemy, crying out in a moment of ecstasy, he couldn’t bring himself to care. God could strike him down right now and he would die happy.

He was shaking, he realized; gasping exposed and sticky against Aziraphale’s still fully-clothed form. Aziraphale was holding him very tightly.

After a handful of ragged breaths, there was a slow slide and they ended up lying side by side. He wouldn’t have thought the couch wide enough to accommodate both of them like this, but it obliged.

Eventually Crowley was able to unglue himself from around Aziraphale. He pulled back enough to see that the angel’s face was flushed and smiling. God, he was radiant. It was like looking at the sun, if the sun were wearing a tartan bowtie.

They were pressed closely enough together for him to feel that Aziraphale was also still very hard.

“Can I…?” He hooked a finger under Aziraphale’s belt.

“Oh, we’ll get there. We'll get to everything.” He stroked Crowley’s sweaty hair back from his face, pressed a feather-soft kiss to his cheek, his brow, his lips. “Take a minute. We have time.”

They did. Crowley was almost ready to believe it.

“So…you thought about this, hmm?” he said after a minute.

“Oh, yes.”

“Did it, ah, measure up to your expectations?”

_(Am I what you want?)_ He couldn’t help it, still.

“Better.” Aziraphale smiled. “So much better.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr!](https://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Unconditionally](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20313748) by [limeblood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeblood/pseuds/limeblood)


End file.
